


hello my old hearts

by Sharkchimedes



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Comics)
Genre: Multi, i would define this as fluff and "richard GO TO THERAPY", less canon compliant and more takes place in an ambiguous setting, rated m for brief non-explicit intimacy and brief delves into Richard's mental state, setting is beachfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 16:17:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: Richard hadn't been expecting to wake up on the shore of a planet he's never been to before, but if Peter and Gamora are responsible, then it can't be all bad. Maybe he'll even make some revelations along the way.





	hello my old hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeaStarsandJellyfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaStarsandJellyfish/gifts).

> written as a short birthday present for a friend! happy (slightly) late birthday!

Richard wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here. Granted, he probably couldn’t list all the places he’d been in the last month without checking his suit’s logs; at some point, calls and planets and jumps all just… blended together. It was like a mental slurry, and all he can sift out with his shaky fingers is just the stuff that’s seared in, the bodies and the fire and shit like that. The rest washes away in a grainy muck.

That was probably why the other Nova (and several friends) kept telling him to take a break, see some sights, talk to someone, Centurion.

“We tranqued you.” Gamora says, matter of fact, laying next to him in bed after he manages to get his voice to work and ask. Peter snores and shifts on Richard’s other side, nose poked in between his shoulder blades. “We were going to watch you to make sure you didn’t get up and try to run off, but then someone fell asleep.”

Peter just snores again in response, and shifts closer again.

Richard knows Gamora well enough to know that she’s more amused than anything else, at least with Peter. Her expression is neutral, and he’s been with her long enough to recognize when she thinks something is in good humor. Jury’s out on him, though.

Most of his loved ones have been in the range of frustrated with him lately.

The air is salty, and it’s starting to get lighter as he looks back and forth between Gamora and the ceiling. It doesn’t give anything away about where they might be. There are plenty of places with high saline-content air, except Richard can discount planets with enough natural saline to pose a threat to most mechanical bits, because Peter would never leave his ship anywhere with that kind of higher erosion chance-

Gamora lightly taps his forehead. “Stop thinking so hard. You’ll wake Peter.”

Richard tries to not pout, because trying to figure this all out calming is the only thing really keeping him calm, but then, in the slowly brightening room, he thinks to glance down, and-

“Where is my suit?!”

\---

Neither Peter nor Gamora will answer him on that, only providing the very vague answer that his helmet is somewhere very safe, no chance of it being stolen, nope, no you don’t need to see it to confirm that, please just eat your breakfast.

Which Richard does, because rounded meals are important to keep yourself going at peak capacity. Not because they both look at him in worry when he changes out of Gamora’s extra set of pajamas and into the frankly hideous “very serious disguise” Peter tosses at him. Or maybe serious means something different to the guardians, something with alien floral patterns and a cut that reminds Richard of things his dad wore to anything casual. Richard can’t imagine what it would be appropriate for, but he gets that sometimes you might not want to go into situations declaring what you were with a glittery flame on your chest.

For Richard, serious can’t get much more serious than just wearing the helmet of a Nova Centurion, but this will do. If only because it smells like it’s been dosed in so much coffee that no amount of heavy duty wash cycles can strip it out of the fibers.

It turns out the salty air is because they are, of all things, on a beachfront, on some planet that Peter and Gamora were both instrumental in assisting a while back so they cashed in the recognition for a better rate on a vacation house. Richard laughs when they tell him, because it’s funny. Being Nova has pretty much gotten him a decent memory at places like Knowhere and in the hearts of younger Corpsmen. He never has the chance to hang around long enough for more. The guardians have the luxury of operating on a longer timescale most of the time, while Richard usually comes in after things have all gone to hell.

They don’t seem to think it’s as funny. But they don’t ask about it, either, just look at each other.

(Deep down, Richard knows something is wrong with him. He knows he’s just scared of facing it. But facing it can wait another few days, right?)

By the time Richard finishes his meal, Peter’s drained a full pot of coffee and is ready to actually start doing things. And seeing as they’re on a beach… Peter, of course, wants to go mess around in the water.

Richard does too, honestly- he can’t really remember ever just playing around on a beach, even when he was a kid. It wasn’t the sort of thing they’d done.

So they go down to the water. Gamora watches them from the shore, after calming informing them that if they burn themselves in the sun, they can apply their own treatment to it. It’s a fair point, but if they were going to have gotten star-burned it would’ve been years before now.

until they start splashing each other and she rushes down into the water to claim victory.

The sand is soft, and Richard ends up sitting on his knees in the sea, about a hundred feet from the shoreline, watching alien fish jump and flip when they notice the much bigger shapes in the water. It’s peaceful until one nearly smacks him in the face.

Not long after that, Peter wades over and shows him a shell that stuck in his foot- a swirling spiral with a few spinels pointing off it- and after they decide it’s been long vacated, he takes it back to the shore and declares it as a gift for Mantis when he gets back to the guardians.

Gamora joins them out in the shallows and help Richard find a shell of his own to take back and give to Sam next time he sees him. It turns into three shells instead of one because Peter and Gamora both agree that Sam is a great kid and deserves more than one, and by the time they decide they’d stacked enough shells back on the sand to give to a quickly-growing list of acquaintances and friends, Richard has to take his shirt off and they use it to carry them back up to the house.

The shells get piled up on the table and they hold a riveting discussion on which ones will actually go where as they eat dinner. Gamora and Peter nearly get into it over one of the shells she’d picked up, until Richard intervenes and suggests they give it to Cosmo, which they both seem to approve of.

That night, after they mostly wash off- mostly just to keep from getting sand in their bed and nightclothes and out of their hair- Peter catches Richard by the arm, carefully searches his eyes for a moment, and then presses him against the wall and kisses the lingering salt from Richard’s lips.

It’s the gentlest thing to happen to Richard in several months, and it’s Peter, so he melts, and then he gets greedy and presses back.

Gamora comes out from the bathroom and allows herself to get swept up- which makes the whole thing even better. She’s a bit more reserved in her affection, and is very meticulous in applying it.

He’s missed them both more than he realized- he really needs to find more missions to take for the Corps that give him the excuse of hanging around the Guardians.

Richard isn’t sure how they get there, but they all end up on the bed sans clothes- Peter is pretty good at getting things off without people noticing.

They gently take him apart.

Richard ends up with his face pressed into Peter’s neck, clinging to him, with Gamora pressed up against his back. He’s a little shaky and a little bit teary eyed, so he just buries his face in Peter’s shoulder and lets the soothing rhythm of Peter’s breathing and Gamora’s fingers tracing down his shoulder blades lull him to sleep.

\---

It's been about four days of this, the getting up and sharing meals and running around in the sand and the low shoreline grasses (and several efforts to “enrich” their experience with several weird kits their hosts left behind), when he makes the decision.

He’s the first to wake up, and it’s still dark when he opens his eyes and blinks at the ceiling. He can hear Peter shift, tugging part of the blanket with him, before things go quiet again, save for the soft sounds of breathing and the distant white-noise lull of the ocean.

He lays there for a while, watching Peter and Gamora and letting himself enjoy the heavy, warm and cozy feeling of their presence, and then carefully manages to get out from the mess of limbs and blankets and sheets and the better part of last night’s clothes, and quietly goes out and down to the water.

Richard watches the water race up onto the sand, pushing grains and little bits of bright shell past his feet, the sun patterns in the ripples and little wavelets, and the occasional little creature that goes swirling by. To him, it looks like they’re hitching a ride, but to the little fish and stirred up crustaceans, it must feel like they’re being pulled by the force of a hurricane.

He thinks he understands why they worry.

Richard stands there long enough for the sun to finish rising, and then heads back up into the house.

Somehow, both of his- y’know, now that he’s thinking about it, they never had decided what they wanted to call each other. Lovers, they’d all agreed was a little bit older than they all were or liked to think of themselves as, and partners was a bit weird when two of them were actually partners on a team- are still asleep, so Richard gets into the fridge and attempts to make breakfast.

It’s definitely not as good as either Peter or Gamora can manage, but for someone who isn’t used to making breakfast Richard thinks it’s still a decent step up from rations and the typical off-the-shelf meals many ships will carry on board- which was usually what he had.

After that’s done, he goes and carefully wakes them up- kissing Gamora’s forehead and waving a cup of coffee over Peter’s head until he suddenly launches at Richard to get control of the cup.

He waits till they’re done eating and then carefully lays down across both their laps, staring up at the ceiling and swallows hard. Peter and Gamora are quiet, patiently waiting, but Richard can tell by the way Peter starts carding his hair and Gamora puts a hand on his leg that they’re curious and concerned.

“I think… I think I’m ready to. Talk.” 

**Author's Note:**

> shortly after the end of this fic they ALL went to therapy because they all have their own problems. the end!


End file.
